I believe the Church has been talking about God for long enough now. We’re due for a change. People know enough about God. They know what God likes and what God doesn’t and how God would generally want them to live their lives. It seems, to us and to them, that we just keep repeating ourselves. As I said, we’ve been talking about God for long enough now.
It’s time to stop talking about God, and start getting our kids and neighbors and friends in touch with God. It’s time to help them taste and see that the Lord is good. Not “sit and think,” But taste and see!
If we’re pretty excited about introducing a friend of ours to someone, we might talk about it for awhile, telling our friend all about this new person and how great they are. But if we never got around to actually introducing them, our friend would get pretty tired of the same old stories.
It’s the relationship that is important, not the knowledge.
Sure, this makes sense, but it gets pretty tricky when you start talking about God. How do you actually introduce someone to the Spirit of Christ?!
The most significant way, I believe, is to model the relationship. The first question, if you are serious about moving your circle of influence past the “intellectualization” of Christianity, is to ask yourself if you feel you are experiencing intimacy with Christ. Christian mysticism is about spirit meeting spirit, and a bond being formed.
The most important task you can do as an ambassador for Christ, is to spend time hanging out with God yourself. Even if it cuts into time that you wanted to spend in “ministry.” Spending some time enjoying God’s presence, aware that God is enjoying yours at the same time, will do more for those around you, than any words you could work up. If you have a sense of intimacy with Christ, you will be able to do more than just talk about God.
Creating some guidelines for personal “sabbath time” with the Lover of your life will be a significant ministry to those in your circle of influence. Six years ago I made a commitment to spend one morning a week out at a retreat center for reading and meditation.
Assisted Suicide: The End of Suffering
Huge purple, grape-like masses are what a man named Richard Chinn saw under a patient’s chin when he went to work for a hospital. This patient was diagnosed with cancer, and those huge masses were the cancerous tumor. When this man would eat, the cancerous growth would start collecting food, of whatever he didn’t swallow quickly. When it would start growing to about grapefruit size, or larger, the doctors would amputate it. However, this did not do much justice, because the growth would just come back. Amputation after amputation made the patient very uneasy and want to end his life. He and his family numerously asked doctors to put him out of his misery, and even went to court, but he was still told “no.” There was no more point to this man’s life, he was suffering miserably and the cancer would never go away. Eventually he came down with ammonia, and instead of trying to revive him, they finally let him have his peace (Chinn). If Euthanasia was legal, then this suffering man could have ended his pain early, but due to complications in the legal system, his life was drug out too long.
Euthanasia is defined as a painless, happy and easy death, which is derived from the Greek words Eu Thanatos. Looking back to ancient Greece and Rome, Euthanasia was practiced regularly. If they saw a person suffering miserably and they could do nothing for them, they would end their life early by feeding them poison. However, throughout time religion was increased, and the life of a human being was viewed as sacred. Because of this, euthanasia was slowly portrayed as wrong (“The Controversy”).
There are two main types of euthanasia- passive and active. Although both are illegal in all states but Oregon, passive euthanasia is easier for people to accept. Passive involves taking a person off of their life support, and letting them die naturally, while active is ending a suffering persons life prematurely, by helping them die, with an overdose of medication (A Euthanasia Glossary). Although Euthanasia is not widely accepted, nor legal, there are people who try to break the rules.
Jack Kevorkian, a retired pathologist, was convicted of first-degree murder, in March of 1999, and will spend 10-25 years in prison. He injected a man named Thomas Youk with a deadly level of medicine and killed him.